La Liga posts record revenue, trails Premier League

MADRID: La Liga has reported record revenues of 3.6 billion euros for last season but it remains a long way short of the numbers posted by England´s Premier League.

The Spanish Football League, which includes the first and second divisions in Spain, said on Thursday the total for 2016-17 represented an increase of 495 million euros compared to the previous campaign.

"This is the best season in terms of La Liga's economic and financial results," La Liga chief executive Javier Gomez said.

But the most recent figures for the Premier League alone, from the 2015-16 season in England, amounted to 3.6 billion pounds, then around 4.9 billion euros.

That latest figure for the English top flight also came in the final year of the previous television rights deal, which has since increased to 5.14 billion pounds for the current 2016 to 2019 cycle.

Deloitte´s Annual Review of Football Finance last year therefore forecasted that for the equivalent 2016-17 season, Premier League clubs would have earned at least 4.5 billion pounds, equating to approximately 5.2 billion euros.

La Liga said its latest 3.6 billion-euro total represented a growth rate of 15.6 per cent and owed 40 per cent of its total to television rights, generating a pre-tax profit of 234 million euros.

It was also the first season in which the distribution of TV rights money was centralised after clubs had previously negotiated with broadcasters individually.

The rest of the total was made up of 622 million euros in marketing, 475 million in transfers, 746 million on matchdays and 117 million from advertising, with other sources accounting for 245 million euros.

For the current 2017-18 season, La Liga officials hope revenue will exceed the 4 billion euro mark for the first time.

"La Liga is on the rise financially but is still some way off catching the Premier League, which remains European football´s trailblazer," Dr Rob Wilson, football finance expert at Sheffield Hallam University, told Agence France Presse.

"The global exposure of English clubs has led to domestic and international TV agencies paying more to showcase English matches so the Premier League remains dominant off the pitch, even if not so much on it."